Class
of 61 | For Phyllis Murray GEd61, the Prince Edward County
school lockout hit home, albeit from a distance. Having been born
in Farmville, Virginia, where her parents, uncles, and cousins attended
the all-black R.R. Moton High School, she was well aware that the
schools separate-but-unequal facility sparked a 1951 walkout that
led to a lawsuit against the county schools, which in turn became
part of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Her
grandfathers house in the town would later be used by a delegation
from the American Federation of Teachers sent by U.S. Attorney General
Robert Kennedy in 1963 to ensure the opening of the newly integrated
schools.

But by the time the students walked out in 1951, Murray (then 12 years
old) and her parents were living in Mount Vernon, New York.

Though she wasnt sorry to leave behind Farmvilles whites-only lunch
counters or its colored-only movie-theater balcony, she soon found
that the North had its own brand of Jim Crow. At her schools modern-dance
club, for example, Murray told the gym teacher that shed like to
teach one of the classes, which were then taught by four white students.
When her teacher, after some months reflection, agreed, the original
student instructors walked out. I taught a wonderful dance class
alone, she says, and her students loved it.

Murray took part in a number of marches on Washington during her undergraduate
years at Hunter College in New York, and later, as a graduate student
at Penn, she helped undergraduates make placards to protest Woolworths
hiring policies in Philadelphia. Today she is a writing-process teacher
in the New York City public-school system and a chapter leader for
the United Federation of Teachers.

Fifty
years after Brown vs. Board of Education, the New York City
public schools and housing are still virtually segregated by economics,
Murray wrote in an article for New York Teacher. When lobbying
in Albany does not help, many teachers are forced to take out-of-pocket
monies to create the proper classroom environments for their students.
But despite their efforts, the schools become as poor as the neighborhood
they serve.